A Table By the Window (23 page)

“Yes, ma'am.”

But when Carley looked up after rubbing the stray bristle into a rag, the girl had made no move to leave.

“I could help you do that.”

“Thank you, but I'm doing fine.” Carley admired the girl's tenacity. The expression on the young face was so familiar. Where had she seen it?

She had not seen it, she realized, but
felt
it when she stood before Emmit White asking for a chance to prove herself. Again softening her tone, she explained. “I couldn't allow you to help me without paying you. It would break the minimum wage law, and I would be fined and probably lose my business before it even opens. But I can't
pay
you, because I haven't received my tax ID number yet.”

“Yes, ma'am.” She nodded. “Thank you, Miss Reed.”

For what? Giving you false hopes?
“Take care, Brooke.”

The girl returned less than twenty minutes later with a small paper bag. “Mr. Marshall says this is the best brush they have for varnish.”

Carley blinked up at her. “Mr. Who?”

“He owns the hardware store.”

Which you would already know, if you'd bought your brush there instead of off the drugstore rack,
Carley told herself. But she could not accept this favor, even if she repaid the girl, and even though she would end up going to the hardware store to buy the same brush herself. Accepting would only fuel the false hopes the girl already had.

Carley rested the defective brush on the varnish can rim again. “I'm very impressed that you did that, Brooke. It shows real tenacity as well as creativity and will serve you well.”

The girl brightened, but cautiously, as if not able to believe her ears. “Really?”

“Yes, really.” Carley sighed, “But you'll have to get your money back. I can't accept that brush—even if I pay you back—because it makes you think you have a good chance of getting a job here. And I'm sorry to say it, but that's probably not going to happen.”

“Oh.” Brooke bit her lip. Even from the floor, Carley could see the sheen over the charcoal-rimmed green eyes before the girl turned away.

Carley shifted her hips to the left, unfolded her legs, and got to her feet. “Just a minute, please,” she said, grimacing, shifting her weight back and forth as needles prickled her calves.

Brooke returned from the doorway. “You all right?”

She nodded, and when she could walk, pulled out two unvarnished chairs. “My legs fell asleep. Will you sit with me for a minute?”

The girl waited until Carley was seated, to perch upon the edge of the second chair with shoulders slumped.

How do I even begin?
Carley thought. Not only could she see her own reflection from not too many years ago, in that jaded/naive, hard/tender, tough/fearful face, but she imagined her own mother was once like this Brooke Kimball. What would she say, were she able to go back in time and speak with her?

“Do you know what I'm planning to open here?” Carley said.

Brooke hesitated, obviously wondering if this was a trick question. “A café?”

“Not only a café, but a serene little place where people can relax, visit with their friends, and soak up some atmosphere as well as good food. I'm not targeting teenagers as patrons, although anyone of any age who walks through the door is certainly welcome. My main focus is on older women, the shoppers you see on the sidewalks.”

Carley watched the girl for any sign that she was going too fast. But Brooke seemed to be absorbing. At least her green eyes did not wear the glazed look of some of her former students.

“Anyway,” Carley went on, “Older women are usually very conservative. And they're more comfortable around young people who are dressed modestly.”

“I have a dress,” Brooke said quickly. “And a denim skirt. You don't have to let me wait tables. You can put me in the back, washing dishes.”

“That's not the point. Besides, we'll have uniforms here.”

Then, what
was
the point? She was rambling, unfocused, when the girl needed some concrete advice. Carley sighed again. “Brooke, how old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“Has no one told you how to dress to apply for a job?”

The girl stared back, chewing on her bottom lip. At length she shook her head.

“Well, you know what I said about the customers who'll be coming here? It pretty much applies to most business owners. If you dress like you're…hanging out with friends, for something as important as job hunting, business people won't take you seriously.”

The green eyes narrowed thoughtfully. She looked down at her shirt, then glanced away.

Carley's heart went out to her. Against her better judgment she said, “Brooke, did you list any references on your résumé?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Please don't call me ma'am. I know it's a Southern thing, but I'm only nine years older than you are, and my Western ears just aren't used to it.”

“Yes, m—.” She closed her eyes for a fraction of a second before correcting herself. “Okay.”

“I'm not promising you a job, but I will contact those people. Do you understand?”

The girl's shoulders straightened. “Thanks!”

“And your guidance counselor too, if she's not on your résumé.”

“I'm not in school,” Brooke said.

“I know. But they work summers too.”

“I mean, I'm not in school.”

Carley looked at her. “You dropped out?”

“Back in March.”

“But why?”

She shrugged. “I was gonna fail eleventh grade anyway.”

“Oh.” And yet the girl was clever enough to spot Carley's problem with the paintbrush and try to solve it in the hopes of getting a job. She obviously had
some
sense.

Carley glanced again at the letters on the shirt.
In some areas
.

****

“Yeah, she worked real hard for us the past two summers. The kids just loved her,” said LPN Arleen Fielding over the telephone that evening. One of two references on Brooke's résumé, she lived off Highway 44 and was employed at a clinic in Seminary.

“Why did you terminate her employment?” Carley asked at her kitchen table while tearing salad greens.

“Well, I didn't really terminate it. I just don't need her this summer. My boyfriend's mom—Roberta—moved in with us 'cause her old man's fishing buddies were always laying around in her living room drinkin' beer. She told him to choose them or her, and he chose his buddies.”

“Oh. I'm sorry to hear—”

“Roberta isn't. She said she'd rather clean up after three kids than a half dozen big ones, and it's saving us the baby-sitting money we'd have to pay Brooke.”

“Would you say Brooke is honest?” Carley asked.

“As the day is long. She got here on time and never stole a penny.”

The second name on the résumé caused Carley to smile. She did not telephone this person, but drove over to Henderson's early Friday morning.

“Just leave that in the buggy, hon,” cashier Anna Erwin said, reaching the scanner around to read the bar code on the 48-pack of bottled water.

“Hey, Carleyreed,” Neal pulled the shopping cart through the checkout lane as she was replacing the wallet into her purse.

“Hi, Neal.” She did not
need
the water today, for the painters would not be coming until Monday, and she was content with tap water herself. But she did not want to make Neal uncomfortable, or hinder his work, by showing up with the sole intent of asking about Brooke Kimball.

“Are you having a good day?” she asked, unlocking the Ford's trunk.

“I'm havin' a good day,” he echoed. “Gabe and I played dominos last night. Do you know Gabe?”

“I don't think so.”

“He's my cousin. He's twelve.” He swung the water into the trunk. “They live in Prentiss, and we made peach ice cream. Do you like ice cream?”

“I love ice cream. May I ask you a question?”

“Okay.”

“I met a girl named Brooke Kimball the other day.” The car rocked when Carley slammed the trunk. “Do you know her?”

“I know Brooke. She has a basket on the front of her bike. She wants plastic bags, not paper. She ties them to the basket so they don't bounce out.”

What to ask now?
“Is she nice to you?”

He grinned, nodded. “She's nice. She's my friend.”

Next, to Tallulah High School, where the guidance counselor, Mrs. Sparks, was a short, softly rounded woman with white cheeks and permed auburn hair. Carley remembered her, vaguely, from the basketball games.

“You're the young lady who's opening the café,” Mrs. Sparks said, pumping her hand. “The whole faculty is excited. We get burned out on lunchroom meals, and take turns going for takeout two or three times a week. Only we get sick of fast food, and you can't call in orders ahead of time to Corner Diner.”

Telephone takeout orders
. Carley had not considered the idea, assuming most of her patrons would be out-of-town visitors. And she did not even realize that Corner Diner didn't offer that service. The vision she had for Annabel Lee Café suddenly grew. Was it possible that it would be even more successful than she had originally thought?

They sat in an office with Wedgwood blue walls, Carley taking her up on an offer of a chocolate-covered mint from a candy dish. “Brooke Kimball has applied for a job at my café. Would you recommend her?”

Mrs. Sparks nibbled a bit of her own mint thoughtfully. “Yes and no, frankly.”

“I guess I should hear the bad news first.”

“When she was here, she wouldn't study, cursed like a sailor, and dressed like a tramp.” She sighed. “None of that seems to have changed, from what I can see and hear.”

And none of that was surprising. Still, it was enough to reinforce Carley's initial misgivings. But as long as she was here, she asked, “And the ‘yes'?”

“She'll work like a field hand if you encourage her. I tried that, and was beginning to make some headway with her, but there was no reinforcement from home.” Defensively, she added, “It's almost impossible to do your part if the parents refuse to do theirs.”

“I understand,” Carley said, without explaining just how well.

****

The figs were ripe, but Carley had no time for them, beyond filling a cereal bowl in the mornings for breakfast. She invited the Paynes to pick them, and suspected it was not by happenstance that they overlooked the ripest figs on the lowest branches. Nice, when friends, as well as family, took pains to be thoughtful.

“I hear you have a date with a certain chief of police,” Gayle called over the sheets on her clothesline Saturday morning as Carley filled her bowl.

Carley made a face at her. “It's not a date.”

Gayle laughed, but then came around the sheets. “Just be careful, Carley. He's a nice guy but a real Romeo, from what I hear.”

“Really, it's not a date. He's cooking some vegetarian foods in the hopes of my putting them on the menu. But thanks for looking out for me. And that goes for leaving the best figs too.”

“Well, it's your tree! Besides, you need them. They're loaded with zinc.”

Zinc?
Carley thought on her way into the house. She hoped it made a person stronger, for today she had to carry sixty chairs into the storage room in preparation for the painters coming Monday. She would have to leave the tables for them to move, but wanted to get as much out of their way as possible beforehand.

She did not telephone the Kimball home; she wanted to speak with Brooke in person and figured the girl would show up again. Sure enough, she arrived a few minutes after Carley. In a concession to modesty, she was wearing a simple white cotton shirt with all buttons fastened. But the denim skirt fell only midway down her heavy thighs.

How did she ride her bicycle without causing a scene?

“Hi, Miss Reed,” the girl said.

“Hi, Brooke.”

“Um…I was wondering…”

“You're here about the job,” Carley said, lowering a chair to the floor. “I've checked your references.”

“Yes, ma'am?” the girl said hopefully, then flushed. “I mean—”

“It's okay if a
ma'am
slips now and then. I've been called worse. You have the job.”

“Oh, thank you!”

Carley held up her hand. “Wait, hear me out. You have the job, providing you agree to three conditions.”

“Anything!”

That almost made Carley smile again, but she forced herself to assume a serious expression so that the girl would understand the gravity of the situation.

“First…you must understand that the
only
job I'm offering you is as dishwasher. I've done it before—it's hard work. If you don't think you can handle it, or if you think you might be tempted to complain later, I'd rather get someone else.”

“I can handle it,” she said. “I won't gripe.”

“Good. Second, when we order uniforms, you'll get your correct size, with room to move around in, and you will not shorten or alter it in any way. Do you get my drift?”

“I'm not sure…”

Carley sighed and conjured up an image of suit-and-tie EEOC investigators lurking outside the window. “My patrons will need to feel comfortable here.”

The girl nodded, but with enough glaze over her green eyes to cause Carley another sigh. “Brooke, frankly, I don't want anyone coming to work here looking like a Hoochie Momma. Now do you understand?”

The green eyes widened with comprehension. “I'll wear a gunnysack if you say to.”

Now Carley could not help but smile. “Maybe it won't come to that. And number three is that you get along with your fellow employees. Keeping customers fed and happy will be stressful enough. We don't need drama in the kitchen. No fights, no cursing.”